Patience for Pickling

I know I’ve been slack on this blog, especially with baking and recipes and stuff. I have made cupcakes, honest! I just have been too busy stuffing my face instead of posting.

The next few entries (hopefully) will be devoted to something new I’m trying. Pickling!

My cousins and I grew up on homemade pickles that our great-grandmother loved to make – icicle pickles. My grandmother also made a few jars once my great-grandmother passed away but those are long gone. I think, a few of us in the family have been given the recipe, but as of yet, none of those elusive pickles have cropped up again. We’re all interested in making them, but we never seem to get around to doing so. I guess pickling and canning isn’t so much of a big deal in the culture anymore, where you can get fresh fruit and vegetables all year round; except for those few gourmet or home-grown types of people who enjoy the whimsy of pickling and canning.

But they don’t sell icicle pickles in stores. Not in any I’ve seen anyway. They’re sort of sweet like sweet gerkins but not really? I haven’t had them in years, I’ve definitely forgotten the taste! Anyway, the idea continued to grow when I was talking to a co-worker about canning and pickling and she mentioned her husband loved icicle pickles and her mother-in-law made them. Before then, no one else had really known what icicle pickles were, so I was excited! And it got me thinking again! Though, I think they might go by a different name, since someone else mentioned “refrigerator pickles.” (Correction: upon research of these pickles, I realised they are not the same. Refrigerator pickles are a quick and easy way to make pickles, and take two days in the fridge for them to season completely.) Icicle pickles are the ones that have to sit around and as Angie said “mold for a week or so” in water and then you drain them, and repeat the process. Sounds gross, doesn’t it? (They don't really mold. I hope.) But they are oh so good!

Anyway, I was in luck, since my grandmother, in a bout of clearing out her home and giving my mom and I the things she doesn’t want any longer, gave me her pickle pot, an old metal vegetable box from a refrigerator! Success!

So, this will hopefully catalog my progress in making delicious icicle pickles!

The recipe first calls for “2 gallons of pickles.” Naturally, I did not know the equivalent of pickles to gallons! I ended up calling my grandmother, and her response was, “Oh, I don’t know! I just put the pickles in until they filled the pot!” The discussion finally ended up with us deciding between 12 and 14 pickling cucumbers – which are a bit smaller than regular cucumbers. I ended up using 9 or so because some of the cucumbers had gone soft in the week that I had them.

So you slice your pickles up and put them in a big pot, preferably with a lid. And when I mean big, I mean big! You need to have room for your cucumbers as well as the water you’ll be pouring on top of them!

You’ll need to boil a gallon of water with 2 cups of pickling salt poured into it. (Pickling salt momentarily stumped me as it wasn’t in the salt and spice section like I logically believed it would be. Randomly, I found it with a selection of canning jars down the paper plate/plastic food container aisle. Hurrah!)

Once the water is boiling, you pour the water into the pot with the cucumbers and cover it with the lid. You let that sit for one week!! So that’s where I’m at! More next week!